What exactly qualifies as a Traditional Martial Art?

Personally I think it has more to do with media, for example movies or people's perceptions from media of what may or may have not happened in days of old.

For example some people try to classify Hapkido as a "traditional" art when really it is more "modern". (I don't think of it as traditional and I studied the art for three years before switching to bjj).

The sad thing is things would be a lot better if you take the whole "traditional/non-traditional" classification away.

Sure they do. Sometimes radically, for a variety of reasons from "Young man learns form from young man, gets old and teaches an easier version to young men" to "This is better for martial prowess" to "This looks prettier and brings in Western money" to "I learned art x and art y and will now smush them together."

TMA is a misnomer though—it basically is a stand-in for "the arts that routinely lost in embarrassing ways in the UFC due to fanciful training, strategies, and overestimations of their own efficacy."

Sure they do. Sometimes it's just that someone learns a form from a young guy, then years later someone else learns it from that same guy, but now he's old. Or some forms really are analyzed for how well they train various things and are adjusted purposefully. Or people have multiple teachers and unconsciously combine their arts...or consciously do so.

TMA is a misnomer though—it basically refers to those arts that lost in the early UFCs in an embarrassing way due to foolish training techniques that had been fossilized in the systems for a variety of reasons (the Cultural Revolution, kiddie money, passing on the forms but not the indigenous wrestling games that everyone played that actually made the forms work, etc.).

Traditional martial arts are ones where they place a emphasis on ritual and tradition. We do things this way because that's the way we've always done them, the old masters created something perfect and we must try and emulate them. Non traditional care more about doing things that just work. Styles adapt, and a dedicated student should be perfectly capable of eventually exceeding his teacher (who exceeded his teacher, etc.)

Of course it's a sliding scale, with some styles being more traditional than others, and schools within a style also varying in their level of tradition.

IMO, the major difference lies in the fact that TMAs are practiced for the purpose of maintaining a cultural heritage, whereas non-TMA is far more fluid with regards to evolution.

The development of BJJ/no gi techs is a good example of such adaptations, as well as the fact that some things that work great in a no gi/pure grappling setting are a no no when it comes to MMA (certain escapes from the mount, which would actually worsen the bottom's situation in MMA due to GnP are regularly used in grappling).

"We know previous generations trained in these kinds of clothes. Following that example may give us some insight into movement or other elements of the art that might otherwise be lost or less obvious. Wearing a pair of woven straw waraji sandals while training outside, for instance, will teach you a lot about the footwork of a system intended for implementation on natural terrain."

But then again, the fact that such elements may have been lost in the cushy McDojos pretty much means that most of the stripmall stuff isn't TMA either.

Throw in the fact that Okinawans were conditioned in ways the average European/American can hardly experience these days (farming makes for some serious conditioning), and the fact that they did spar even back then, and then we're seriously blurring the line betweem TMA and non-TMA/MMA/RBSD/etc.

Throw in the fact that Okinawans were conditioned in ways the average European/American can hardly experience these days (farming makes for some serious conditioning), and the fact that they did spar even back then, and then we're seriously blurring the line betweem TMA and non-TMA/MMA/RBSD/etc.

I'm not sure if the difference in workload made up for the difference in nutrition though. Who's stronger, an Okinawan peasant rice farmer or a sedentary beef-eater? And when are we talking about? Back when Okinawans farmed that way in large numbers Westerners were also doing some pretty heavy labor in large numbers.

I have never farmed rice, but I imagine it involves an unholy amount of body-weight squats. Or do you bend over at the waist so you keep your butt dry?

Yeah, just did a thread similar to this right before the holidays. Basically I was saying that we should rename Traditional Martial Arts to something more like "Classical Training Martial Arts".

I read that one before I started this thread. I did a search to see if anyone has made a topic similar to this. Even if we do change what we call it, it's still semantics. Be it traditional, classical, or whatever, I'm trying to pin down exactly what makes them categorized as such.

Traditional martial arts are ones where they place a emphasis on ritual and tradition. We do things this way because that's the way we've always done them, the old masters created something perfect and we must try and emulate them. Non traditional care more about doing things that just work. Styles adapt, and a dedicated student should be perfectly capable of eventually exceeding his teacher (who exceeded his teacher, etc.)

Of course it's a sliding scale, with some styles being more traditional than others, and schools within a style also varying in their level of tradition.